


Prove To Me That I Am Anything

by fueledbypeterick



Category: Fall Out Boy, Pete Wentz - Fandom, patrick stump - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Peterick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 15:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2657930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fueledbypeterick/pseuds/fueledbypeterick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I raise the hood on my jacket to cover the top of my head, not putting the phone back into my pocket because there is no lapse between the phone calls I am making and the texts from Patrick. Ashlee isn’t answering but she is in the house. All the lights are off and the door is locked, but she is in that goddamn house and she knows I am calling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prove To Me That I Am Anything

I raise the hood on my jacket to cover the top of my head, not putting the phone back into my pocket because there is no lapse between the phone calls I am making and the texts from Patrick. Ashlee isn’t answering but she is in the house. All the lights are off and the door is locked, but she is in that goddamn house and she knows I am calling. 

 

The divorce finalized today at 10a.m but it didn’t hit me until about an hour ago. I would be lying if I said I didn’t mean to take the route that passed her house. The music always gets a little louder and my foot always gets that much heavier on the gas pedal when I turn onto the road of someone who had given up on me. It’s like I have that predetermined fate written all over my face or that’s just what my name means in some other language. 

 

I have knocked enough times on the door to bruise my knuckles, so I use the side of my palm instead. That only makes me hit the house harder. It’s not so much knocking anymore. Each time I bang my hand against the house without a response my face gets warmer, tighter, more likely to fall off my skull from the pressure at the top of it. 

 

Patrick is just as persistent as I am, sending a wave of “you’re just pushing her away more.” 

 

“if she had any doubts, she wouldn’t have gone through with it”

 

"One of these days I’m going to have you admitted" 

 

I heard his fist tunnel through the air before I felt it slam into the back of my head. Cheap ass shot, but enough to put that sharp ring back into my ears. The rest was silent: every swing I took at his face, each time my knuckles blasted against the bone in his nose. I couldn’t make out a sound and the good solid hits he was getting on me made my eyes blur. I could barely tell my sleeve from his, our tattoo’d arms flexed to overpower the other’s. Craig got me down on the concrete of Ashlee’s front porch, for the record it was not without struggle, sitting on top of me with his hands around my throat. He only used enough of his weight to keep me there, but not to suffocate me. She screamed. I don’t know in who’s favor her horror was for. 

 

Craig was a friend, first of all. Just the kind of friend to swarm in on your failing fast marriage and be the rebound charmer to your wife. That was one thing, a big thing, but from my view this night looked like a date night to celebrate the divorce being legal and final. With that motivating thought, I forced a left hook at him, knocking him cold and off of me. I had a few guaranteed seconds between the time it took to get back on my feet, take a step towards Ash before Craig would be up for round two. 

 

"You really have lost your mind, Pete" 

 

Another step and she would be in arm’s reach. 

 

"Can’t you see when something is over?" 

 

"I can see when something is worth not giving up on." 

 

I push up the sleeves of my jacket and Craig gets up without dusting himself off or adjusting his clothing. 

 

"Call the cops", he directs his pointer finger in her direction and puts himself in between her and I. “Try touching her again, dumbass." 

 

I left before the cops showed up. 

 

A restraining order sat on my kitchen counter two weeks and exactly fifty-nine desperate texts from me later. 

 

Under it, my court ordered admission papers to the Kaiser Permanente Mental Health Center. Courtesy of Patrick.

 

 

—- 

 

Being here isn’t as glamorous as the media makes it. A group of police officers didn’t escort me out of my home in a straightjacket with all my neighbors watching and whispering amongst each other. I didn’t fight them on the way into the back of a squad car, yelling obscenities. I drove my own vehicle to Kaiser Permanente with my papers, walked in, sat in a waiting room alone and sent Patrick a text just as a ‘doctor’ signaled me into the hallway beyond the doors. 

 

"Don’t come see me. I’m a lost cause. They’re not God." 

 

My phone was turned off and put into a miniature safe along with my keys, wallet and ipod. All my essentials, no longer in my possession but still possessed by me. That’s a worse feeling than not ever having them at all. 

 

I spend the first night without questions. My only guess is that they try ‘easing’ the patients into the lifestyle. I don’t sleep and its not because the broken in mattress could give the healthiest person back problems or the guy in the room next to me screaming to the guy across the hall from him about how the bugs in the corners are planning something against us all, but I don’t sleep because I can’t count the white tiles in the ceiling. Not because I’m brain dead when it comes to math. My head just won’t stop. I can’t shake the thought that Ashlee isn’t even worried about me. She won’t be sending me letters. I won’t get any calls from her. She is moved on and who’s to say she cared in the first place? Everyone I have ever loved I have fought with everything I have to keep them, but they all go so fast. Without warning. 

 

Every single time. I am a chaser and I could never have the chance to be the one getting chased. 

 

I sleep in sections. Waking every hour almost to make sure I am the only one occupying my room. There’s something about this place that has me thinking I’ll open my eyes to a figure watching me sleep. 

 

——

 

“Why do you think you are here?”

 

I made a disapproving face and Dr.Napier corrected herself. 

 

"Why do you think you’re here?" 

 

"Because I was confronting the woman I love about her unfaithful actions with a former friend of mine, during the ending of our marriage. Legit enough?" 

 

"Well, it’s understandable why you were upset. How long would you say you two were in the honeymoon stage?" 

 

"Until about five months ago." I was only halfway lying. Ashlee was miserable in the midst of our constant fights over my jealous nature and that started when we were just dating. We didn’t spend as much time together as we should. The paparazzi took so many pictures at one time that to the naked eye we were always together. Patrick, Andy and Joe quit counting on me. I had my head stuck up Ash’s ass and I couldn’t keep anyone in the situation happy. But, my marriage was the most important thing to me and it wasn’t the only thing separating me from the guys. I still don’t know whether or not I chose the right path. 

"Do you think she tried to make things work, or? A lot can happen in five months." 

 

I nod, only agreeing with the last part. This just felt like another interview. That’s what I kept telling myself so I wouldn’t shut down. My head came up with wild ideas as she spoke. Ones like: maybe Ashlee is watching this from the other side of that camera. Maybe everything Dr.Napier writes down will be copied and sent to her, then she’ll realize I would have died for her and I can have it all back. 

 

"If you really love someone, you aren’t supposed to give up on making it work. Am I right or is that crazy?" 

 

The doctor smiled. 

 

"To make a pair work, each party has to be able to function on their own. If not, it’s a disaster waiting to happen." 

 

"Like building a bridge with unstable rusted materials. Yeah, I get that. But I don’t need to be built. I’ve been here for years, I just think I need additional support. From somewhere else, because in here," I put my pointer finger to my head for the full effect, “I have enough room to be positive I just never get the opportunity to be anything but insecure and pathetically needy. That part of my mind is a lot louder." 

 

 

She writes, but I don’t think it’s verbatim, then turns to a new page in her notebook, shortly writes and tears the paper out. It is pushed to the opposite side of the empty table to me. I read it before I touch it. 

 

"Seeing yourself in a new light. Think on it tonight." 

 

I folded the paper, not looking up at her because the ten words made too much sense.

 

 

—-

 

Dr.Napier and her colleagues don’t mind too much that I carry around a social status. Supportive fan mail arrives to my room in a timely matter and I reply to as many as I can before my schedule takes me elsewhere. The only things I know about my reputation now is what I read in the letters.

 

The employees are indifferent None of them treat me extra because I was the bassist of some band that made it big. No one treats me harshly because of it, either. It’s been a while since I have felt like I could breathe without persecution. 

 

Ashlee doesn’t call, neither does anyone else. Of course when I told Patrick not to visit I meant the complete opposite of that. I waste my daily phone calls on Andrew. He spares me the conversation about where I am and talks about the kids he sees in Clandestine merch. I grin and he tells me stories like we’re sitting next to each other. 

 

Andrew makes me promise to call our parents. Dr.Napier has blocked the interaction between them and I because she agrees when I say the calls would be unnecessary stress. 

 

 

—-

 

I have and will never be able to keep my own secrets. 

 

So, when Dr.Napier asks about Patrick, I spill whatever guts I have left onto the table in front of me until I’m nothing more than a sobbing broken down and drained sack of flesh. I cry for the first time in a year. 

 

"So it was more than friendship and less than a romantic relationship? In the middle?" 

 

I cock my head once to each side. “Yeah. But above any relationship I’ve ever had."

 

I go on to explain, in what mass quantities I can about him. I tell her he’s not real, that he’s too perfect to be considered a human. I tell her no one has ever related to me the way he does. No one has ever made me feel so fucking confident. No person had ever given me so much inner conflict. I try explaining to her that no matter how much I adore him I could never seem to bring myself to being official with him. Being his. Him being mine. That scared me because I knew in the end someone would be screwed. I couldn’t live with myself if it was him. 

 

She bluntly asks about the intimacy between us and I have no opposition to answering. I tell her things that could have come out of romance novels. Me holding him in our sleep, attached to his neck on stage, whispering how I would never be the same while he was nearly dreaming. I would lean on his shoulder blade and sleep most nights, falling in love all over again listening to him breathe. I went into detail about his facial expressions on the mornings I would wake him with my tongue flicking at the head of his dick. Dr.Napier listened as I went on to the stories about truck stops in the middle of nowhere, him young and nervous but hard and anxious to stretch me out even if he was going in dry. I smirked when I told her about the first time, how Patrick fucked me so hard he forgot to pull out and almost cried out of embarrassment. After that, we unloaded into each other every time. 

 

I have never felt more secure in my life than in the moments when my cock pulses, me bashing my hips into his backside and every ounce of cum shooting into him. He would make these sounds and I would become breathless, my hands shaking as I gripped his body by his hips. 

 

 

No one else in the world would stare at the same ceiling with me until we saw a sunrise, talking about our theories on what life even is. 

 

That’s when I feel the warmth of tears. I stare at my feet from underneath the table and bite at my lip to keep the liquid inside, praying for her not to say what I knew she was about to. 

 

 

"I spoke to him when he was signing the papers to have you here. He was adamant about you receiving the best care available and swore he would have the center shut down if he heard of any different. I assured him I, at least, value my patients like my own friends. All he said then was he needs you to get better because he needs you in general." 

 

I raise my hand to my mouth, to fake chewing on my nails. Something to distract me from the inevitable.

 

"Can you see it? Patrick is your chaser." 

 

———

**Author's Note:**

> The second part of this has been started. It's been a while though, so I'm debating whether or not to finish it.


End file.
